Successful technologies today seldom come about due to a grand “Eureka” event. Rather, they come from lots of people all having little Eurekas and little “damn, I was sure that would work” moments. -Clark Lindsey

Category Archives: Spacecraft

Congratulations to SpaceX who landed the first stage intact. Assuming cost is roughly related to stage mass and engine count, reusing the first stage saves 9/10 of the whole rocket cost. If they can run the stage ten times, that … Continue reading →

Inspired by Michel Van (not Scott Lowther as mentioned earlier) at Secret Projects, who ran into the Gemini inflatable Rogallo wing test videos that are now available (not embeddable so linked only). There are parafoil systems for airdropping stuff, though … Continue reading →

Or The Space Game, by ESA. This is a nice javascript webpage where a probe is shot from Earth to Jupiter with gravity assists at Venus (twice), Earth and Mars. You try to achieve the lowest propulsive delta vee. You … Continue reading →

Well, scaling seems to be my pet issue. I recently wrote something not entirely well reasoned in a comment at Paul Breed’s. (For some reason Chrome complains about blogrolling.com malware there so continue if you’re sure you’re safe.) So let’s … Continue reading →

For the ISS. The shuttle would transfer unused hypergolics to the ISS propulsion module. ATV as well. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISS_Propulsion_Module It was canceled and instead Progress and ATV are used directly for most boosting. Nevertheless the technology could be useful in developing … Continue reading →

I do appreciate that the model is so different from Apollo that it takes time and thought to understand what it is about; I did not see it at first myself — but once I got past my preconceptions, I … Continue reading →

NASA’s plans to return astronauts to the moon are dead. So are the rockets being designed to take them there — that is, if President Barack Obama gets his way. Sayeth Orlando Sentinel. Haven’t followed NASA’s latest movements. The Augustine … Continue reading →